Firestorm Online

After getting home I almost immediately sat down and put on my VR headset, the familiar main menu was a welcome sight.

The main menu's news tab was currently displaying a professional match, Team NEV vs Team Glass Cannon. Professional matches were unlike matchmaking in several ways, the most obvious was the match structure. In a matchmaking game it would only last 10-25 minutes dependent on the game mode and map, in professional matches though there was a first to 8 rule.

The commentators were going wild as NEV won the final round "He's done it! CMS has clutched yet another round for his team and has carried them all the way to the European Finals! We can only offer commiserations to Team Glass Cannon and our congratulations to Team NEV! I've been your host Anders Scott and we'll see you in the finals!"

The broadcast ended with the view of tens of thousands of cheering fans, this regional tournament had attracted almost 80,000 fans to attend in person with a further 90 million watching the official live stream. E-Sports had a massive uptick in attendance and viewership ever since FO was released, you wouldn't be wrong to suggest that FO was currently the core of the entertainment industry.

What was most shocking was that this tournament was only a regional one, if it was an international tournament then the viewership would undoubtedly be in the hundreds of millions!

I clenched my fist just thinking about what it would feel like to stand on that stage, I wanted this, I needed this!

Having gotten this burst of motivation I jumped straight into a new competitive match.

'System I remember last time I got some attribute points for completing and then winning the match, will I get the same this time?'

[User, the reward for completing the match was only for the first game played after the system was entrusted to you]

'Oh…'

'So how do I get more points in the future? You can't be telling me you want me to play tens of thousands of matches or something right?'

[User will soon be able to gain additional rewards through completing system set objectives within the match, this function is currently locked because of your low rank. Reach Silver to unlock this function]

'Alright, I guess I've got to rank up as fast as I can!'

The map loaded and revealed itself to be Laboratory, this map was perfect for me as it suited my equipment excellently. The tight corners and short distance combat suited pistols perfectly and the Desert Eagle was the king of all pistols at this rank, it's high power, high penetration and high accuracy made it the perfect weapon in experienced hands. That being said if you weren't able to handle the high recoil you would just be a sitting duck.

The Kevlar vest would also be extremely useful in this map; FO had a fantastic physics engine which enabled damage from rubble and debris. The glass beakers and high tech but fragile equipment that were scattered throughout the map would be mostly harmless under gun fire but if someone was crazy enough to throw a high explosive grenade in these tight spaces then it was inevitable that shards of glass and metal would turn into extremely dangerous shrapnel.

Unlike Blazing Sands, Laboratory was a Bombsite map. The general backstory provided by the game was that a rival company wanted to destroy a piece of recent innovation that this company had come across. In practical terms that meant that the game clock would be set to 15 minutes and reset to 3 minutes as soon as the bomb was planted.

The HUD came up and displayed the game information.

Game mode: Competitive

Mission Type: Bombsite

Map: Laboratory

Team: Attackers

'Attackers again huh?'

Another practical implication of this mission type was that we all spawned together. We had a choice as to where we plant the bomb, either the Research and Development lab or the Server room, this meant that our best option was to work together to attack the same objective to secure a bombsite.

I looked at my teammates, the default character skins consisted of a dark blue urban camo combat suit and a similarly patterned Kevlar helmet with a black balaclava underneath. Each friendly character had a feint blue outline, if you looked at them directly then you would see a half transparent name appear on their uniform.

"Hey guys, which site should we go to?" I asked, communication was often the key to victory in these matches.

One of my teammates turned his head and said "Let's head to the server room, it's dark so it will be harder to take but easier to hold."

The rest of my teammates began nodding in agreement. While the reasoning wasn't very complex it was very fair, if we could secure the room then our dark blue uniforms would allow us to blend into the dimly lit server room very easily.

Thanking my lucky stars that my teammates were at least somewhat reasonable I nodded my head before considering each of our roles in the team.